Don DeLillo, �The Names�
The Demonic Trio known as Fern and Jason and BabyDave all Looooooove Don DeLillo. Or so they say, anyway. So when I saw Fern I waved this book at her.
�Okay, I�m on page 184 of this fucking book,� I said, �and I want to know when a story arc is going to happen.�
�I didn�t read that one,� she responded. �Jason did though. He said he liked it.�
So Jason walked in a few moments later to pick Fern up. I said the same thing to him.
�I don�t think I read that one.�
�Yes you did,� Fern said. �You said you liked it.�
He asked me what it was about. I said, from what I could tell, that it was about language and archeology. Set mostly in Greece. Also in India. �They talk about language a lot.� I said. �Not much else happens.�
Jason had no idea what I was talking about.
That makes two of us.
I realize that a lot of these reviews are turning into a �Usual Suspects� list. Steinbeck, Daredevil, Bukowski, Philip K. Dick, Alan Moore, Chomsky, Kerouac, Jim Thompson, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Monty Python have all had at least five entries, and probably more.
I don�t mean for it to happen this way. I just had multiple books by all these authors, and I�m trying to catch up. Aside from Thompson, I�m getting close, with all of these authors now down to four books or less on my to read shelf.
I�d like to widen the scope on what I read. It�s not easy. Things come in that I don�t expect to see again, and I get them for myself. I�m glad that my stack is now less than 100 titles. But dear Christ on a stick, how many times can I say that DeLillo has too much dialogue with little development?
Well, at least one more time, as I still have �Ratner�s Star� to read.
